


From the Mouths of Slightly-Creepy Psychic Babes

by Drakey



Series: Truth [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Creepy Force Toddlers, F/M, Gen, I don't owe anyone any diacritics 'cause they're hard, Trans Ezra Bridger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23785720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: The toddlerhoods of five Force-sensitives, from the hair-tearing perspective of their exhausted parents.
Relationships: Ephraim Bridger/Mira Bridger, Kento Marek/Mallie Marek, Lux Bonteri/Ahsoka Tano, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Truth [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700803
Comments: 2
Kudos: 88





	From the Mouths of Slightly-Creepy Psychic Babes

Ephraim was a serious man. He wasn't given to whimsy or hilarity, and his approach to child-rearing was methodical and scientific. This had worked well for the first year. One infant being largely the same as any other, Ephraim simply thanked the Force that ***** was a relatively quiet girl who rarely displayed the kind of untraceable distress that those who preceded him into fatherhood complained of. 

Then ***** started to talk. At fourteen months, the baby went, in less than a week, from barely being able to string two syllables together to demanding insistently and eloquently to be allowed "out of doors" in search of "my friend."

"You can barely walk," Ephraim pointed out as reasonably as he could the third time ***** made the request, "and I have no idea who your friend could possibly be. You don't mean the Linnner boy next door, do you?"

"Not Keestaan," ***** said. "I wanna see my _friend!_ Where is he?"

Ephraim stared at his daughter in despair and nearly sobbed with relief when the front door opened and his wife came in with an armload of groceries. "Mira! Thank heaven, maybe you know what she's talking about!"

Mira set the bags down in the kitchen and hurried to her husband's side, only for ***** to look up at her before she could say anything and say, clearly, "Mama, I wanna see my friend."

***** looked so strange. She still needed to cling to the walls and furniture for support when she walked. In a soft onesie with closed feet, she looked ridiculously like a tiny adult. Her imperious demand seemed to have a quiet necessity behind it, and Ephraim and Mira exchanged a quietly desperate look.

"We want to, sweetie," Mira said, "but we don't know where to go."

+-+

"Kento," Mallie called out from the nursery, "has the baby done this before?"

Kento crossed the house with brisk, hurried footsteps. Galen, being a mischevious soul with an absolutely ferocious connection to the Unifying Force, was so far responsible for the untimely demise of thirty-four houseplants, six fires ranging in size from minor nuisance to minor catastrophe, two akk dog attacks, nine vanished household implements, eighteen scribbles of graffiti around the village, three fistfights between the local children, a marked increase in tension with the Wookiees, and Kento's inevitable heart attack. As Kento came into his son's nursery, he spotted the eighteen-month-old floating nearly at the ceiling. Giggling.

"I couldn't have been this baffling," Kento said.

"You mean this kriffing weird?" Mallie kissed him on the cheek. "I bet if you asked the Creche Masters at the Jedi Temple, they'd tell you you were weirder than this."

+-+

Luke and Leia couldn't be stopped from answering the door. It was the first thing that made Anakin think maybe he didn't want more than just the two kids. The first time, it was somewhere between cute and worrying. A toddler who has just learned to walk can have a profound effect on a room when they walk in with a guest who never got to ring the doorbell.

Within a month, Anakin and Padme were both primed to leap up whenever one of their children made for the door, except it was always when they were distracted that the twins were actually going for the door, and there would be Luke with an amused Obi-Wan, or Leia with Rex. The first time it happened was when they were sixteen months old, and Ahsoka came in with both twins on her hips, laughing. 

In the three months that followed, they let in more than a hundred guests, nineteen of whom were people just passing in the halls of their building and not even acquaintances of Anakin or Padme. All nineteen of those people had turned out to need help that only Anakin or Padme could provide. And the whole time, the twins were silent. They cried, or grunted, but never talked, until Luke watched impassively as a smuggler he'd plucked out of the building departed with new confidence and a plan for a good, happy life.

"Luke, why can't you just let these people go by in peace?" Anakin asked.

"Because they feel sad and I can feel it, too," Luke replied.

"You can't help everyone," Anakin objected.

"I could help him, though," Luke said, and it was about then that Anakin remembered that his son wasn't even two yet and had never spoken before.

Anakin turned to stare at Luke. Luke smiled. There was something really strange about getting a wise, reassuring smile from a toddler.

+-+

***** planted her hands on the table. "No!" she said. Her little nose stuck in the air, and her lips jutted out. The sheer _pressure_ of her refusal had Mira moving to eat the verner root herself, instead. It was halfway to her mouth when she realized what she was doing and stopped. 

"Yes," Mira growled, but she had to focus very hard to get the spoon to her child's mouth. Finally, she snapped "you need to eat this or your fever will get worse, now _stop!"_

***** blinked. "Oh. Okay. Why didn't'cha say so?"

Mira reflected, not for the first time, that explaining this sort of thing to a two-year-old wasn't supposed to help.

"I'll remember to tell you next time," Mira said.

"After this, I wanna go look for Friend," ***** said. Nearly a year of searching had yielded no results. Mira and Ephraim had taken ***** clear to the edge of the city, only to be met with insistence that *****'s Friend was somewhere to the east. A remarkably consistent twelve degrees north of due east, to be specific. Ephraim had had ***** point towards Friend after spinning, while blindfolded, while he spun her around, and in any other confusing circumstance he could think of. Her little arm had always pointed the same direction with eerie accuracy.

"We can't go look for Friend," Mira explained patiently. "Friend doesn't live in the city. You have to be patient. And *****, you have kekorott fever. You're not leaving the house."

+-+

Mallie found Galen running along zha-raratha vines with half a dozen Wookiee children. They were brachiating happily along, swinging under like sensible creatures, and there was Mallie's absolute terror of a son, running along on top of the vine with his arms outstretched. Mallie gasped and grabbed him with the Force. Galen squeaked as he floated down to Mallie's arms. "Mama!" he complained. Mallie snatched him from the air.

Skywalker and his wife were apparently already having full conversations with their hellaciously Force-sensitive children. There were reports from all around the loose gossip network of ex-Jedi about babies being way too precocious. The Jedi Creche Masters, when questioned, only said that it was normal, though there had been undue snickering at the story of the time Galen tamed a katarn. Mallie suspected that was due to some toddlery misadventure of her own.

+-+

The little girl took Senator Lowah-Kiin-Nesko's hand before he could object. She looked human, with enormous brown eyes, but none of the fear that the towering insectile frame of the Vindar usually inspired. She stared at him.

"What?" he asked.

She stared at him, then turned towards the Senate chamber.

"Yes, human child. I have to go and vote there."

She shook her head. Kiin clacked his mandibles and moved on toward the chamber. She didn't let go, and he couldn't move her. He turned to stare at her, and suddenly it occurred to him who she was. Leia Amidala-Skywalker refused to be budged. He tried to lift her up, but he couldn't move her in the slightest. Kiin began to grow worried. He had to vote. The bill would open up his homeworld to the galaxy, and it was beyond time to reduce travel security measures. 

But this miniscule human kept him from moving. 

"Please let go," Kiin begged.

Tiny footsteps sounded behind him. With mounting horror, Kiin turned to find Luke, the little boy, approaching. It was rather like being faced with an approaching lothcat, except that he felt uncomfortably trapped and aware that lothcats like to play with their food.

"Next year," Luke Amidala-Skywalker said in a tiny, achingly clear and innocent voice. "If you open your planet now, _he_ will hide there."

A shudder rattled Kiin's carapace. Leia let go of him just as anakin Skywalker hurried down the hall. "Luke! Leia! What have I told you about running off?" The former Jedi looked from his twin children to the senator, and he groaned. "Senator Lowah?"

Kiin nodded. "Yes." He looked down at the deep, deep blue of Luke's eyes. There was a warning in them. "Your children were just... advising me."

Sywalker grimaced. "I am so sorry. Come on!" He scolded and chivvied his children into line, his voice fading into the distance. Kiin slipped into the senate chamber and sat heavily in his booth.

"Senator Lowah," his chief aide said, "it is time."

Kiin looked across the chamber, to where Amidala-Skywalker was arguing in favor of the position he was supposed to hold. 

"At least I'll get to retire after I kill my career doing this," Kiin muttered as he moved forward to speak against easing travel security.

+-+

"I am so sorry, he's just an absolute handful."

Ephraim smiled sympathetically at the harried-looking woman whose toddler had just been plucked off of his leg. "It's all right, I have a little terror of my own at home," Ephraim said.

"No you don't he's nice," the toddler spat determinedly.

"Sweetie!" the woman scolded. Her son fell silent.

Ephraim chuckled. "My daughter would probably like you. She likes troublemakers." 

The woman smiled. "Thank you for being so kind. Most people in the city don't have any patience for him."

"Oh, you're from out of town?" Ephraim, always up for news from outside of Capital City, prompted, "where from?"

"We have a little farmstead out east," the woman said. Her son fidgeted and squirmed a little more. "Settle down, baby boy," she said to the toddler. "Look, I'd love to chat, but I have to get going."

Ephraim thought nothing more of it until he came home with the groceries and was immediately hit by a dark-haired meteorite. 

"You met my Friend!" ***** yelled. "Was he happy? Did he ask about me?"

Ephraim looked at his daughter for a moment, closed his eyes, took seven carefully measured steps to the kitchen, and set down his bags.

"Point to your Friend," Ephraim said.

***** pointed. Southeast, slowly tracking north. Ephraim fought down the urge to take ***** out to the family landspeeder and try to chase down the woman and her toddler.

"It's okay papa, I know we don't meet each other yet now," ***** said, as though a two-and-a-half-year-old professing knowledge of the future was just... normal.

Hell, maybe it was. Ephraim decided to start composing a message to the Jedi on Coruscant.

+-+

After nearly an hour of negotiation, Galen was finally persuaded to stop levitating the baby rancor.

+-+

"Do you think they're going to go for it?"

Anakin looked up at Ahsoka. It made a certain kind of sense, how strong their bond had gotten since he picked her up on Rhen Var with Rex. He was holding his prostetic hand up in front of him with the Force while he cleaned fruit juce out of the socket, the beverage's remains there courtesy of Quinlan Vos, rather than the two very coordinated toddlers in his house.

"Padme's idea? It makes sense." Anakin twisted the prosthetic in the air. Several drops of juice skittered out of its inner workings. "Dammit Quinlan," he muttered.

"You know Obi-Wan is going to be all for it," Ahsoka said. "He wanted help with you so much."

Anakin paused. "He almost lost me to the Dark Side," he reflected. "I think Obi-Wan knows how close it came better than anyone but me. If Sidious had scared me a little more, if the old Jedi dogma had done any more damage... He's hated the separation from family and the way the Order demanded complete detachment for years. He loves children, you know."

Ahsoka stared out over the cityscape. The High Council was probably in session right now, and Anakin could just see the Jedi Temple, just imagine Obi-Wan and Quinlan managing to bicker while they agreed. "He would have been a terrible Creche Master, though," Ahsoka said after the moment had stretched out for a while.

"Oh, the worst," Anakin agreed. He started doing his Obi-Wan voice, which was terrible and instantly recognizable anyway. "Now no more of this crying. It's not helping you, and it's _uncivilized."_

Ahsoka laughed. Anakin let his prosthetic rest, wrist-down, on the table, where it could drain properly. He would have to rinse it again in a minute, probably run it through the sonic scrubber. He was going to be working on it all night, and Padme hated to see him working with it, so he was going to keep it out of her sight as best he could. The remains of the party were still scattered around. He'd told Threepio to save the cleaning for tomorrow.

"So how are things with Lux, really?" Anakin asked after a while.

Ahsoka's lekku flushed again, and she shot Anakin a glare. Her ire faded with visible speed, though, and she sighed. "Do you really think he likes me?"

"Uncle Lux is in love with you," Leia said, crawling over the back of the couch into Ahsoka's lap. Anakin sighed, checked around, and sure enough, Luke was coming around the couch towards his own lap.

"Daddy doesn't have his hand on," Anakin warned.

Luke yawned and crawled up into Anakin's lap. Anakin looked over at Ahsoka. Leia was already asleep there.

"From the mouths of slightly-creepy psychic babes," Ahsoka said with a shrug.

+-+

The Jedi Padawan kept staring at *****. There was something a little disappointing in the whole thing. Master Billaba had done a few tests, declared ***** Force-sensitive, then gone off to retrieve a few other Force-sensitives.

Somehow, Mira had expected Kenobi. When Ephraim's message reached Coruscant, he'd wound up speaking to Obi-Wan Kenobi himself. Apparently, there were nine other Force-sensitive kids on Lothal and they could all sense each other like ***** and her Friend, and when Kenobi had talked about it, Mira had seen the careworn Jedi's eyes light up at the prospect of a mystery.

She probably shouldn't have expected the Jedi Order to send a war hero, but this dark, brooding teen was somehow an extra disappointment. Ephraim came back into the living room with tea, setting a cup down next to Mira, one next to the Jedi, one for himself, and a slightly chilled cup on the floor for *****. ***** started sipping.

"Is something about ***** particularly interesting, Caleb?" Ephraim asked.

The Jedi picked up his tea and held onto it with both hands. The mugs were good for hand-warmers. "I don't know," he said after a while. "Master Billaba says there's an ancient temple here, and the kids might all be connected through that somehow, but it feels like... like one of these children is going to be more important somehow. Like it isn't just the temple."

"It's not," ***** said cheerily. She rolled a ball across the floor, then rolled another much faster, so it bounced off the wall, back to the first one, and knocked that ball back to her hands. With that accomplished, she stood up, just as Caleb also stood up. ***** opened the door and in came a tiny bundle of energy that caromed into ***** as she screamed "you're here, you're here, you're here!"

Depa Billaba stood in the doorframe, looking like she'd been hiti in the face with a high-speed starfighter. "Sorry. He couldn't be persuaded to stay in the speeder." She sighed.

The kids were whispering back and forth excitedly, too quick and quiet for Mira to understand. Finally, the newcomer turned and screwed his eyes shut tight in concentration. Mira smiled, charmed at the display of forethought. 

"I'm Jai," the new child said. "I'm *****'s Friend, but he says he doesn't like to be *****."

Ephraim froze in mid-sip, looking baffled over the rim of his teacup.

"Oh," Mira said. She looked from Jai to Bat.. to her child. "I think I understand. You want a boy's name?" The question prompted a sharp nod. "We were going to call you Ezra," Mira said. "That's the same name as an ancient and very important scholar. But then we... uh... we thought you would like ***** better."

Ephraim still looked baffled, but Mira just watched the little gears turn over until, with a frown, her child said "I can be a boy?"

"Oh," Ephraim said. "That makes sense. Of course you can."

"Then I like Ezra," he said.

Caleb started giggling. It was very undignified.

"What, Padawan, could possibly be so funny," Billaba asked.

Caleb fought his own laughter to say "These poor people have been worried sick over their kids, and the kids already know each other better than the parents."

"Well, we'll just have to fix that," Billaba said. "Mister and Missus Bridger, a lot of the people around here seem to think you're pillars of the community. I'd like to work with you to set up a school for Force-sensitive children on Lothal."

Mira grinned. "Could I be a teacher?"

+-+

When Kento opened up the hatch, Galen did not go bounding out of the ship into the endless duracrete abysses of Coruscant. All things considered, Kento decided that Galen's being stunned into immobility by the sight of the ecumenopolis was probably good.

"I hope you're right about this," Mallie said, coming up behind her husband and grabbing their son's other hand.

"Skywalker said his old apprentice could help," Kento began, but he was interrupted by a cheerful cry of greeting.

A young Togruta woman was heading towards them, two very young Human children trailing behind her. She was beautiful, and had a soothing Force presence that Kento hadn't exptected to see in a veteran.

Behind the little party of three was Senator Amidala, a perfectly-presented paragon of Nabooian prettiness. Something in the way she carried herself reminded Kento that although this was a woman who _looked_ as delicate as silk, she was as solid and unyielding as durasteel.

Anakin Skywalker, just next to the senator, though, was deeply unsubtle about his own toughness. He'd filled out more from the old wartime holos; he'd packed on about ten extra kilos, which made him more solid and less wiry, and while plenty of men couldn't pull off the beard-and-long-hair ensemble he was sporting, it did him the favor of making him not look like a lost teen.

"Kento!" Skywalker called out. "Nice to finally put a face to the name."

"We've been talking by holo for years," Kento objected as Skywalker approached.

"Nice to finally put a non-blue, high-resolution face to the name," Skywalker said. He reached Kento and drew him into a tight hug, then did the same for Mallie, then crouched in front of Galen. "You must be the Wild Child."

Galen blew a raspberry at Anakin Skywalker. Kento sighed. "That's him."

One of the tiny children, an excessively blond boy who looked like Kento imagined Anakin must have at that age, hurried up to Galen and stuck out his hand. "I'm Luke!" The boy said. "Come on! We're gonna learn together and Auntie Ahsoka is gonna play with us and did you really have a pet katarn?"

Galen blinked at Luke, and then he hurried off towards the Togruta and the other child-presumably Leia. Kento watched his son go with a smile. All of his friends had been Wookiees on Kashyyyk, and they'd all come from the same place as him, and known the same things. Having Luke and Leia around to be a new perspective, and Ahsoka and Anakin and the Jedi Order being nearby was going to make this so much easier.

Kento was very sure he wasn't the first person to consider that maybe Padme Amidala was smarter than anyone else in the galaxy.

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write a trans Ezra for a while. This will be the only time he gets the wrong name or pronouns thrown at him. I'd like to think that the only reason anyone in the Republic will misgender someone is straight-up not knowing better, and it's not like Disney is gonna so much as mention queer anything in Star Wars that they can't localize away, so I will assume the complete lack of discussion in most Star Wars canon equates to A Galaxy Far Far Away being really queer-positive and healthy about gender shit.


End file.
